Translated by Michael Millerman. Founder of http://MillermanSchool.com - online philosophy and politics courses on Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dugin, Strauss, and more.

“There, there, to the West”

Chaadaev’s philosophical, spiritual emigration was developed and embodied in the poetry and personal fate of an even more extreme Westernizer, the ideal archetype for this movement, Vladimir Sergeevich Pecherin (1807–1885). Pecherin was a Westernizer from his earliest youth. Here is how he wrote about this himself in correspondence with Fedor Vasilyevich Chizhov:

From childhood, I felt some strange attraction to educated countries, some dark desire to move to a different, more human environment; in the steppes of southern Russia I often watched the setting sun, fell to my knees and stretched my arms to it: ‘There , there, to the west...’³³

Pecherin ended his life in full accordance with this desire. He emigrated to Ireland (the westernmost part of Europe!), converted to Catholicism and became a Catholic priest. To him belong the poetic lines (not published during his life-time) summarizing the “smerdyakovite” agenda:

How sweet it is to hate one’s motherland And eagerly await its ruin And in its destruction to discern The dawn of universal rebirth! ³⁴

Moderate Westernizers

Such pure cases of radical and responsible choice for an exclusively Westernized paradigm (up to emigration and a complete change of identity, including religious identity) in Russian history are extremely rare, and, as a rule, the majority of Russian Westernizers - Annenkov, Belinsky, Herzen, Kavelin, Ogarev, Turgenev, etc. - remained within the framework of archeomodernity, falling occasionally into “patriotic feelings” or simply slipping into archaic indistinctness. This trend is clearly visible among liberals (such as Kavelin) and revolutionary democrats (such as Herzen and Ogarev), who in different contexts and under different circumstances sensed their difference from the European cultural-historical type and strayed into contradictory and unclear forms of presenting their positions. The archeo-modern nature of the dispute between Westernizers and Slavophiles was once quite subtly noticed by Herzen, who pointed out the structure of the hermeneutic ellipse:

Yes, we were their opponents, but very strange ones. We had one love, but not an identical one. From the earliest years, they and we have had one powerful, unaccountable, physiological, passionate feeling that they took for a recollection, and we for a prophecy: a feeling of limitless, all-embracing love for the Russian people, Russian life, the Russian cast of mind. Like Janus or like a two-headed eagle, we looked in different directions, while one heart was beating in us. ³⁵

Just as the Russian Slavophiles could not completely break with Westernism and begin the full-fledged construction of Russian philosophy, the Russian Westernizers were unable to follow the logical (Russophobic) route of Chaadayev-Pecherin and try to adapt to the “new homeland,” where the keys were to European culture and philosophy, on whose behalf they tried to speak in Russia and on the model of which they were going to remake it. This indistinctness is fully explained by the dominance of the hermeneutic ellipse, but that does not make the works of Russian intellectuals - both relative Westernizers and relative Slavophiles - more meaningful. Both hover somewhere halfway, to say or do something intelligible, definite, and consistent. The “heart” in Herzen’s passage can be compared with focus A, but neither Slavophiles nor Westernizers paid attention to it. The Slavophiles only declared their intention to go in that direction, but they did not dare to make a decisive gesture and plunge into themselves, into the heart of Russia. At the same time, Westernizers, choosing the mind, “progress,” reason, science, “enlightenment” and philosophy as their reference points, in turn, were tied to the Russian heart like an anchor. Compared to Smerdyakov, Chaadaev and Pecherin, Russian Westernizers, marked by a sincere love for the people and their traditions, were winning morally, but at the same time, from a technical point of view, they only confused the overall picture, while the radical and almost caricatured Westernizers, by contrast, helped cope with the painful impasse of the archeomodern.

The Russian “Lebenswelt” of Vasily Rozanov

Vasily Rozanov stands apart from other Russian thinkers. In a certain sense, he is the most Russian of them, and, therefore, is closest to the archaic pole itself. Rozanov knows the West and European culture, understands them, and utterly and fully rejects them, consciously and radically. In this, he follows the paths of the Slavophiles, especially Konstantin Leontiev, whom he valued, perhaps, above the others. And although Rozanov, a philosopher, did not create a complete philosophy, his intuition, insight, and revelation are closest of all to proving that Russian philosophy is possible, that is, closest to this philosophy. Rozanov himself does not create it, but he comes close to its justification, stands on the threshhold, and anticipates its imminent possibility. This presentiment is fragmentary and preliminary, but at some points, unfathomably deep.

Rozanov’s method of philosophizing itself at certain points anticipates Heidegger's existentialism. He discards Western “metaphysics” from the threshold (though without completely understanding it, unlike Heidegger, which is not important) and turns to what seems to him to be unconditional, evident, and present. Modernity’s metaphysics has turned the world into a mechanism:

Cartesian abomination: an animal is a machine, and a man is a thinking spirit, cogito ergo sum - this typical Catholic and even Christian filth penetrates the whole of European civilization. ³⁶

But the zoological approach of the materialists and supporters of evolution is not at all congenial to Rozanov.

Darwin did not notice that nature’s eyes shine. He made her matte.

It is all matte with it, without oil and juice.

But there is juice. Nature with dead eyes. Brrr ...

He gave dirty tricks, not zoology.

“Music is not necessary, there is a gramophone”: here is Darwinism and the history of Darwinism. ³⁷

Rozanov completely hates European civilization, especially modern European civilization. This is how he understands her basic truths:

Man descends from monkey.

Atoms. And they are moving. That’s all.

Pieces and their movements. Such is cosmology. Where can a tender one be born here. Where can a tender one stay here.

Man is beast. I and you are two beasts.

The system of bestial relations is sociology (Comte, Spencer)

The world is generally pigs. All of them must be sated.

And “satiety” is a world problem (socialism).

Tell me, please, where can a “sacred” one stay here (...).³⁸

The concentration of the West is its philosophy, which is continuous “narrowing”:

All definitions [determinations] are a narrowing (philosophy).

And you do not need to define [determine].

May the world be undefined [indeterminate].

May it be free.

...

...

...

...

...

...

This is the beginning of chaos. It is as necessary as reason and conscience. ³⁹

And vice versa:

On a subject you need to have 1000 points of view. Not two or three: but a thousand. These are the ‘coordinates of reality.’ And reality is determined only after 1000 points of view on it. ⁴⁰

The “coordinates of reality” – that is an attempt to grasp the world and its own being in the existential moment of their phenomenological discovery, beyond abstract, normative prescriptions. Rozanov seeks to convey these coordinates as accurately as possible, at the cost of any sacrifice, first of all, the sacrifice of rationality, logic, consistency, and compliance with the standards of “education” and “enlightenment.”

To hell with ratio! I want porridge with truffles. And I’m hoping for heaven, because I admit and affirm hell forever. ⁴¹

At the peak of the rejection of ratio, Rozanov reaches real prophetic heights; his thought approaches the boundaries of the imaginable:

The first of people and angels, I saw his boundaries. And to see the bounds [also: face], the boundaries, means to see the non-divinity [nebozhestvennost’].

I saw first his non-divinity. And I didn’t go crazy. How did I not go crazy? Well, maybe I have gone crazy. ⁴²

Amazingly, Rozanov has many references specifically to archeomodernity; he feels it subtly, he experiences it, he suffers from it.

Russia is a country where everyone has come off his axis. And they try to jump onto a foreign axis, sometimes onto several foreign axes. And they smash the nose and make our poor Russia ugly and miserable. The traces and consequences of 200 years of “imitative civilization.”⁴³

Instead, Rozanov formulates his message for the Russians:

Here’s what, Russian person: revolve near your axis.

The one you are ingrafted on by birth, ingrafted on by Providence.

Where you have a “Destiny.”

Do not scatter. Focus. Think of “yours” and “yourself.”

Even if you have a destiny for “scatteredness” - well, do not hold back - “be scattered in everything.” Then clarity will come out. Man will be clear and life will be clear. Or else, twilight and confusion. Nothing is visible. After all, with us how is it: a scattered person plays the role of a concentrated person, a gloomy person plays the role of a merry fellow, a windbag usually plays the role of a politician. All colors are mixed, the colors are motley and you can’t make out anything.

Let lechery be lecherous, frivolity, frivolous, let things return each to its own style. Or else all life has become feigned and fraudulent. ⁴⁴

Rozanov’s striving for phenomenology also makes him concentrate on what is Russian, since in the world around him there is only what is Russian, though thoroughly fouled by the archeomodern (a mixture of Russian and non-Russian).

Rozanov almost finds Russian Dasein and penetrates into its essence. Some of his formulas can be recognized as canonical in the definition of the Russian Principle [Nachalo, Beginning]:

Russians do NOT NEED anything. ⁴⁵

It is significant that in his texts material objects and foodstuffs play a huge role. He brilliantly foresees the connection of food with the Russian Principle [Nachalo, Beginning]:

What is the Russian man: he ate, he fell asleep. And there was absolutely no reason to add “industry and trade” here. 46

Amply introducing the topic of eating into philosophical publicism, he reveals the fundamental side of the Russian “life world,” in which food plays the role of a special language, sometimes more intelligible than verbal constructions proper. Throughout his life, Rozanov shows constant concern about food and, with a fatal regularity, dying, suffers from hunger. On the last pages of his book before dying, Apocalypse of Our Time, Rozanov writes:

The food experience is now the main thing. And I noticed that, to shame, they all notice equally. The poor man is no longer ashamed, the bitter man is no longer ashamed ... ” ⁴⁷

And in the last letters to Merezhkovsky and Gippius it is very piercing and desperate:

“Would [that I had some] pie…would [that I had some] curd…” ⁴⁸

This is not a situational statement; in this is all of Rozanov. Frankly and sincerely, he describes the Russian “lifeworld” to its lowest point, to the fundamental eschatological apocalyptic philosophy of matter.

Rozanov raves and does it charmingly, naturally and aesthetically, without hiding what he does. We will meet all the main motives of Rozanov’s work (Russianness, anti-rationalism, food, sleep, the divinity of the world, and most importantly chaos) in the next section of the book, where we will analyze the structures of Russian Dasein.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky: the third testament and two abysses

The case of Rozanov's friend, the philosopher, historian and writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky, is telling.

Like all the astute Russians of that time, Merezhkovsky is acutely aware that “something not quite right” is happening, but he cannot understand exactly what. Trying to rationalize the archeomodern Russian neurosis, he creates (with little relation to Western European philosophy, but much relation to the structure of Russian cultural pathology) the theory of the “two abysses” and the concept of the “Third Testament” (“new Christianity”) that claims to overcome them. One “abyss” Merezhkovsky calls the “pagan system of the flesh,” and the other, the “spiritualistic abyss of the spirit, of consciousness.” Between them is an eternal struggle. And the meaning of this struggle is for both abysses to be overcome in a special dialectical moment of synthesis, when the “third testament” is realized. ⁴⁹

Leaving aside the pompous generalizations that parody at the same time the rationalistic Western European philosophy of the 19th century and Gnostic mysticism, one can easily recognize in Merezhkovsky’s construction a reference to the same hermeneutic ellipse. Merezhkovsky (like Rozanov) feels that its foci are painfully irreducible to each other: he experiences focus A (Figure 1) as “paganism” and “flesh,” “Russian flesh”, and focus B (Figure 1) as “spirit,” “European spirit.” But like Solovyov, with his “all-unity” and sophiological universalism, expressed in a theocratic universalist utopia, he tries to reconcile them. Realizing that this is impossible to do in the present, Merezhkovsky attributes the longed-for moment of “recovery” from the schism to the messianic future. It is important that Merezhkovsky, Rozanov and the sophiologists intuitively perceive the archaic, properly Russian pole as “flesh,” “paganism,” matter,” “substance.” Such, on the whole, is the psychotic attitude of the Westernized elites towards the autochthonous Slavic masses: their being – “down there,” in the “darkness” of ignorance and lack of enlightenment, in an environment of relics, prejudices and dark legends – is perceived as something “base,” “material,” and “bodily,” which one should be ashamed of, but which is at the same time fatally and irresistibly attractive, like passion, sex or food.

Ivan Ilyin: Russian patriotism in the Prussian manner

In the philosopher Ivan Ilyin, we encounter almost a caricatural attempt to create a bravura version of Russian nationalism, successfully circumventing any important and essential topics crucial to elucidating the possibility of Russian philosophy, and replacing questioning and the identification of pain points with a stream of right-conservative consciousness that copies the cliché of European nationalism applied to Russian society. The society Ilyin writes about, while in exile, never existed, does not exist and cannot exist: we are talking about a normative Prussian dream that wants to imagine Russia as a clearly functioning social mechanism of the German type, with a well-established morality, resounding officious patriotism, conventional religiosity and mental orderliness. As a result of such a framework, all content that is of any significance to Russia drops out of Ilyin’s field of vision: nothing is said about the Westernizer pole, focus B (which is marked as non-existent from the outset), nor the specifics of the archaic pole, nor about focus A (which generally disregarded), nor about the hermeneutic ellipse, which should have caused any normal Russian person at least oppressive anxiety (for some reason it doesn’t cause anything for Ilyin). Perhaps Ilyin owes his ignorant aplomb and official “nationalism” to his German mother Carolina Luisa Schweikert von Stadion.

Ilyin builds his philosophical texts in the spirit of the character from the novel “Iron Will” by Leskov named Hugo Karlovich Pektoralis, “discharged to Russia with his cars.”⁵⁰ They have the “iron will” of the struggle against communism until the last breath, without any understanding of the nature of the Soviet regime or the reasons that led to the fall of the monarchy and the October Revolution, and with no understanding of the structure of Russian society. “Accurately and medically” (in Leskov’s words about Hugo Pectoralis), Ilyin mechanically reproduces Russian nationalism, patriotism and gallant monarchism, managing to pass by all the substantive aspects of Russian history, playing itself out before his eyes, with his participation and help. Since there is nothing Russian in such purely German bureaucratic thinking, we leave his texts and theories aside without much harm.

The review of Russian thinkers is summarized in Figure 5.

Notes:

33. Quoted. in I. Simonova. Correspondence of a Westerner and Slavophile: letters from Vladimir Pecherin to Fedor Chizhov // Nezavisimaya Gazeta 20.02.2008 (http://religion.ng.ru/printed/206632)

34. See Pecherin - Gershenzon M. The life of V.S. Pecherin. Moscow, 1910; Streikh S. V. S. Pecherin abroad in 1833-1835 / Russian past. Historical collection. Pg., 1923; Pecherin V.S. Burial notes. / Russian society of the 1830s. People and Ideas: Memoirs of Contemporaries. Moscow, 1989.

35. Herzen, Psma Filozoficzne [Philosophical Works], 476. Cited in Riasanovsky, Russia and the West, 89.

36. Rozanov V. Fleeting. M .: Respublika, 1994. p. 14.

37. Ibid. p. 14.

38. Ibid., p. 207.

39. Ibid. pp. 95-96.

40. Ibid. p. 354

41. Ibid. p. 172

42. Rozanov V. Sugarna. Moscow: Respublika, 1998. p. 27.

43. Rozanov V. Last Leaves. Moscow: Republic, 2000. p. 143.

44. Ibid. p. 143.

45. Rozanov V. Fleeting. Decree. op. p. 193.

46. Ibid. p. 281.

47. Rozanov V.V. Apocalypse of our Time. Moscow: Moskovskaya Pravda, 2001.

48. Gippius Z. Thoughtful Wanderer. About Rozanov / Gippius Z. Living Faces. Memories, Tbilisi, 1991. Vol. 2. pp. 88-125.

49. Merezhkovsky D. The Secret of the Three. Moscow: Republic, 1999; Merezhkovsky D. Messiah. The Birth of the Gods. St. Petersburg: Ivan's Publishing House Limbach, 2000.

50. Leskov N. Stories. Moscow: Artistic Literature, 1973.

 

The Philosophers of Archeomodernity. Part.1

The Philosophers of Archeomodernity. Part.2

The Philosophers of Archeomodernity. Part.3

The Philosophers of Archeomodernity. Part.4